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8 December 2007 Ross Clark reported in The Times – “Protect me from child protectors: This year I was suspected of child abuse over an incident involving my daughter. I learnt some lessons”.

I wasn't surprised to hear the words “miscarriage of justice” and “Professor David Southall” mentioned in the same breath this week. What shocked me was how many in his profession wanted to paint him as the victim. Many parents will have been relieved to see Southall struck off by the General Medical Council for what it described as his “deep-seated attitudinal problems” and his “lack of insight” into his failings: parents, that is, such as Sharon Bozier, whose daughter Hannah was referred to Southall with breathing problems and taken into care after he misdiagnosed the problem as parent-inflicted; and parents such as Stephen Clark, wife of the late Sally Clark, whom Southall accused of killing his children after deciding he looked a bit shifty on television.

It is about time someone in the child protection industry was brought to account for their failings. Of course we need the State to intervene when parents mistreat their children. But there is too long a history of child protection agencies pursuing obsessive campaigns against families and carers, devoid of evidence, sheltered from criticism by the secrecy of the family courts — and escaping with their jobs when their incompetence is exposed. Remember the Cleveland scandal of 1987 in which 96 children were wrongly taken into care, most as a result of Marietta Higgs and her horrible, discredited anal dilation test — after which Dr Higgs was allowed to carry on working as if nothing had happened? There was the Orkney scandal, where social services ploughed on with their fantasy of a satanic abuse ring in spite of protests by the children that they had not been abused. Then there was the case of Christopher Lillie and Dawn Reed, the nursery nurses falsely accused of abusing their charges. After being acquitted in court, Newcastle City Council found them “guilty” through its own inquiry, forcing them into hiding. The authors of the report, led by a consultant paediatrician, Camille San Lazaro, were later found to have libelled the nurses, the judge ruling that their work was “unbalanced, obsessive and lacking in judgment”. Yet the GMC declined to strike off Dr San Lazaro, and she carried on working.

As Charles Pragnell, who was head of research at Cleveland social services at the time of the 1987 scandal puts it, child protection agencies “are racked with too many theories for which there is little or no evidence. Social workers' training does not equip them for undertaking investigations. There is a group conditioning among social workers and paediatricians which prevents them ever accepting they are wrong.” Innocent remarks by children, he adds, are blown up into full-scale investigations because of the requirement to report immediately to their appointed “child protection officer” anything that could possibly be interpreted as a sign of abuse. Child protection workers then begin with the assumption that abuse must have taken place. The consequent deluge of investigations makes it all the harder to pick out genuine abuse. I know what he means, because I have been at the receiving end. I have a pubescent mentally handicapped daughter who, besides tantrams and uncooperative behaviour, this year started taking her trousers down at her special school and playing with herself. The school went to some lengths to reassure me and my wife that this is common behaviour when you have a two-year-old mind in an adolescent body, but would we mind if the local child development team helped?

We agreed, and soon afterwards were met at home by two health workers. It soon became clear, however, that the pair did not see their remit as offering useful advice: rather, before even meeting our daughter, they had jumped straight to the conclusion of child abuse and were on a fishing expedition for evidence. There followed another visit from one of the workers, who waited until I had left the room before accosting my wife with the suggestion that our daughter “may have been interfered with”, adding: “How do you react to that, Mrs Clark?” One could almost see the cogs of the health worker's brain clunking round: men are child-abusers — must be something going on. She added menacingly that if our daughter carried on removing her clothes an investigation would follow. So that's the thanks you get from the State after ten years of bringing up a difficult child: no help, no praise, just put under suspicion of child abuse. Fortunately, in the absence of an official inquiry, I can speak and write about our experience. Many others, some of whom have had children taken away, have been silenced because of the secrecy surrounding the family courts — which allow no reporting and have no juries. “The system is dysfunctional and deeply flawed,” says Mr Pragnell. “Parents are being ambushed in child protection conferences and allowed no legal representation. I am getting e-mails all the time from parents who have been mistreated by the system, in some cases where social workers have fabricated evidence. Yet there is no outside body to keep an eye on child protection officers.”

It is about time we did have one, before more David Southalls are let loose among the nation's children to break up families and ruin lives.

Have your say

I have now been through all the Child Protection procedures, and I can say that it has virtually destroyed me. We have had four social workers and a team manager, who have moved on, but left a trail of poor report writing usually based on hearsay, I had to attend the NSPCC which was belittling and degrading, in fact I would call it 'state sanctioned brainwashing'. My husband is in prison, but there was no evidence to send him there. We were 'stitched up' I now have to meet the police next week because I am supporting my husband. This is a brilliant article, it's about times social services and other child protection groups were banished. My best support came from friends and family. You are welcome to contact me for my story. Ann Marie Varnam, St Albans,

The topic of social workers and most importantly, paediatricians is one that has been worrying me for quite some time. I am a practicing midwife and as such support my clients to be well informed and able to make choices appropriate to themselves and their family. However if a client's choice does not reflect the view of the paediatrician's it seems that that doctor feels supported by law to threaten protection orders against the parents and make the child a ward of court. This has happened several times within my presence and the doctors get very aggressive if I challenge this behaviour on my client's behalf. We are in a very dangerous space if we continue to allow doctors to over-rule parents. Doctors work within a service industry that is very sick as it is an industry that has contempt for its consumers. They are supposed to provide a service, they are paid to do this they do not do it for free, parents need to remember this and doctors need to be firmly reminded of it !! Jacqui Tomkins, London, London

Thank you so much for speaking up Mr Clark. I have been struggling (unsuccessfully) for over four years to try and get over the shock of finding out that people whom we trusted and who were paid to assist us (a music therapist with an abnormal interest in sexual abuse, and workers from an agency who on paper should have been employed to help me with the practical difficulties arising from my physical disabilities but who in fact pursued their own personal sexualised agendas) were in fact harbouring sexual thoughts and fantasies about my child and myself. To this day I cannot forgive myself for having failed to protect my child from people who had taken a sexual interest in him, and I have spent every minute of my life trying to protect other children and families from these individuals, to no avail. Anybody can say anything and social services will thoughtlessly descend on the victims. Our story is in www.bringbackourjoy.com. Please do contact us if you can help. Thank you. Paola Fanutza, London, United Kingdom

This is a very good article. I am appalled that this has been your experience, but not surprised. Having previously followed the stories you mention in your article (Cleveland; Orkney and the Newcastle Two) it is striking that at no point did any of the 'professionals' involved show any signs of having accepted their culpability or appreciating the enormous damage they had done. 'Groupthink' sums it up. Little Midge, London,

A friend of mine was a senior social services officer in Cleveland at the time of the Higgs scandal. I later asked him how he could justify the damage to the families involved. He said that the right action was taken to "protect the children," refusing to acknowledge the harm done to those children (and their families) by separating them from their parents in such circumstances, with many parents having to sell their homes to pay legal fees in an attempt to recover their children. There should have been massive sackings in Cleveland rather than a closing of the ranks and refusal to admit error. Faustino, Brisbane, Australia

Most social workers only have diplomas and as Charles so rightly said are not qualified to make the investigations they make. Yes, I too am a professional who happened to get caught up in the web of social services some years ago. Being trained in psychology and sociology, I was soon aware of the SS tactics. I say SS because the tactics used were and are the same as Hitler and Co. Surely not- I hear you say. Well actually YES. How can they do this and get away with it? They are not accountable to anyone and as all assessments and court cases are held in secret- there is no one to tell.
If you do tell, then you get locked for telling this truth. Worse still, the judges are the SS Rubberstamps and the social workers will remind you of this any time you dare speak up for yourself. They are the best at mental torture, I have ever come across and I have spent years studying their "Herd Thinking. They will never admit to being wrong. Lady Portia., London., UK

Camilla Cavandish writes on this subject too. The answer is to make public all findings. I do not know but believe that there is no restriction in reporting in Scotland. Perhaps that is a better model.
So far as professional responsibility is concerned I (accountant) am subject to being accountable for any signature I give professionally, as are many people. Why should any Profession not have personal responsibility? Your journalist has been "judged" and should as a matter of public responsibility sue. The Times should meet the cost. David Morrison, Airdrie, UK

I've Been Fighting for Justice in the Family Courts for Some Time Now. I Would Like To Say I'm Not Sorry to See David Southall Struck off the Medical Register. I'm Just Concerned To How Many More Professionals Are Working In The Child Protection And Family Court System That We Don't Know About! If You Have Been Affected By David Southall or The Family Court, Support Can Be Found At: www.stopinjusticenow.com Ian Walton, London, UK

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